Daily Archives: August 9, 2018

AiFi Inc. and CrowdAI faced off and shared their pitches with the live audience at NVIDIA’S GPU Technology Conference (GTC) to showcase different approaches with enterprise solutions using deep learning, machine learning and AI.

Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday he will abandon the secret service-style protection used by his predecessor in favor of a security detail of 20 unarmed men and women, including lawyers, doctors and engineers.

Fast-fashion retailer H&M is hoping that big data and AI algorithms will provide the insights they need to regain profitability. The retailer is using technology to enhance its supply chain, help determine merchandise for individual stores and offer a personalized customer experience.

Populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr retained his lead in Iraq’s May parliamentary election, results of a nationwide recount of votes showed on Friday, positioning him to play a central role in forming the country’s next government.

A new video produced by China’s military that features the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) showing off a wide range of the country’s latest military technology has gone viral after its publication to social media on August 1st, the day China commemorated ‘Army Day’.

The just over two-minute video, called “I am a Chinese soldier” is an over the top patriotic tribute emphasizing a combination of personal sacrifice, loyalty, and a sense of esprit de corps in belonging to an elite, modernized military.

The National Interest has provided a translation of the popular Chinese language footage, which is described as follows:

The video is brimful with the grandiosity that is now associated with the military under Xi Jinping: a lot of ammunition is fired, and the very latest in China’s military technology — combat aircraft, a carrier battle group, long-range ballistic missiles, submarines and armored vehicles — is on full, proud, active display.

The video further appeals to a masculine sense of duty and sacrificial hardship as the there’s a series of scenes in the first half depicting men saying tearful goodbyes to their children and spouses, after which infantry soldiers give fierce battle cries while waving the communist national flag, interspersed with overhead shots of huge intercontinental ballistic missiles a silo and an aircraft carrier battle group.

The narration includes the lines: “Peace behind me, war in front of me. Pick up the steel gun, we must let go of the children.”

As some watchers have observed, the world depicted in this video is very much a man’s world — there isn’t a single female soldier; the few women who appear are mothers and spouses, tearfully enduring, no doubt with the full patriotism that is expected of them by the Chinese Communist Party, the absences and heart-rending departures of sons and husbands. At times serene and towards the end bombastic, the accompanying soundtrack could have been written by Hans Zimmer (think his majestic score for Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line ).

China has increasingly over the past year attempted to promote an image of itself to international foes and rivals as on a path of overtaking the United States and other world powers in the area of defense technology.

Screengrab from the Chinese military produced “I am a Chinese soldier”

Meanwhile America’s top nuclear commander warned this week that both China and Russia’s development of hyperonic weapons constitute a threat that the US deterrent arsenal currently cannot defend against.

Air Force Gen. John Hyten warned the two countries are not America’s “friends” and that the new military technology threat should be taken with urgency and seriousness.

Screengrab from the Chinese military produced “I am a Chinese soldier” showing off ICBMs

“You can’t call them [Russia and China] our friends if they’re building weapons that can destroy the United States of America,” Gen. Hyten said.

Below is an English translation of the new video, “I am a Chinese Soldier” via J. Michael Cole for the The National Interest